The only thing that dictates that now would be your starting race. I am sure there will be a race that fits that criteria that you mentioned. If you are dead set on a race then you must just focus on the things you want to become good at. It is really just as simple as that and I wouldn't want it any other way.

To make the game simpler so that it appeals to a wider audience.

I can see where you're coming from OP, but I don't see the necessity for such a feature. At low levels Skills will increase fairly fast anyway. Add that to the Birthstones and you already can get some level of Class Identity very quickly.

I know I'm going to be an Orcish Ranger. I'll use bows and axes, utilising basic Restoration and Alteration, alongside my Smithing knowledge and my good personality skills. Technically I should already be a Demi-god as my character has come from Morrowind through Oblivion into Skyrim (including all DLC's/Expansions). Some things ate the way they are for gameplays sake. This is one of those things. It really won't make much difference once you're a few hours in.

I agree with the OP. While I totally welcome the "grow into your character" playstyle of Skyrim, it would just accelerate what you want to be if you could give a couple points towards skills you know you want to develop. Anyone going through second, third, fourth, etc. replays will already know what kind of character they want to play. It's really just a time-saver measure. FO3 didn't have classes, it just allowed you to put some points towards skills you wanted to develop.

ditto

like Gurren Lagann said, the Gothic way (Gothic games do it like this) allow you to choose your class as you play so that you don't end up with useless skills that you never train anyways, not all people are fantasy D&D nerds you know....

if you REALLY want the option mods will surely oblige so don't worry

Agree with those about multi-classing. I don't want to try a cookie cutter max this less that and then find out I'm a glass cannon only because I knew nothing about the world. If I wanted to be a mage granted having a few more points starting out would help in killing crabs. Although how much would +n help in the long run if you focus everything in game towards power leveling a single class?

Because classes were so "smart".

I don't see why so much negativity is generated from your post. I think what you have written here makes perfect sense. You're not starting to game as a child, so surely you have developed some sort of skill into advlthood. I don't see anything wrong with being able to move points around to raise one at the expense of another. This would also make the beginning of the game more unique for your character.

With this new freedom we don't have to put points into anything in the beginning of the game. This allows you to not be hindered from the beginning of the game. Regardless if there were points or not it will not effect your characters role such as a mage. You can be a warrior then decide to turn into a battle mage, but in oblivion this would have been more difficult to do.

I do appreciate the fact that the player popualtion may not be so monotonous, but once again, in trying to appeal to a wider audience, they've ironically done the opposite in some sense, in that they appealed to a different audience, when they could have easily done both.

And yes, mods may or may not. But we have yet to see the creation kit, and VGUI editing generally requires a script extender as well, so it'll probably be quite some time before we see mods of that magnitude.

Im going to bail from this thread actually. I thought I did a good job with my first line, explaining that Im not arguing with the "play into your character" idea, and yet, people seem to think I'm refuting the logic of that and are only posting about that... making the whole point sort of moot. Guess we can go back to posting in repeat race poll threads since anything that attempts to be a serious conversion deteriorates into flaming and name-calling.

indeed

I NEVER used the pre-set classes EVER

always saw a skill I just did not want.

I don't think it would be particularly bad to borrow another idea from Fallout and give the player 3 'Tagged' skills at character creation, just for a +10 bonus. The OP's idea sounds reasonable as well. I see nothing game breaking about either, just lets you specialize your character at the beginning based on your idea of them rather than purely by race.

A free stat boost at the beginning of the game does not seem like a thing that many people wouldn't use. :laugh:
Also, if you start with more Skills Points, your final level will be minor.
Also2, It seems more interesting from a Dev's point of view that our character evolve within the game, and not are simple created in a screen full of numbers and thrown at the gameworld.

Note: Sometimes is fun to see people wanting features that would make the game easier while many complains are about how the game is "Not Hard Enough!". Bethesda will never satisfy the community.

dude just play with a mage and do magic stuff you wasted a topic on this

well if we take Bethesda's word for it the KC will be much more "modder friendly" so you might get a nice surprise and find the mod after 2 weeks , with no script extenders needed

*cough*race bonus*cough*

Because they are giving the player freedom in the game overall. Instead of making you choose a class, and you having to decide before you've even played the game what skills you're going to use to level up to the exclusion of all others, you start out with nothing and develop whatever skills you want to develop, specializing in whatever you want via perks. It works for people who are indecisive about what they want at the start because they can try out different skills before committing to something. It works for people who know exactly what kind of character they want to play before the game is installed because you can still just use those skills you want to focus on exclusively and plan out your talent tree progression in advance.

Just type player.modpca (skill) (amount) if you're on PC. If you aren't then you have to level it up regularly until the console modders figure out how to edit the gamesaves.

Hopefully that is the case.

Recently many games have had unfulfilled promises from trusted game developers (not referring to bethesda) and that has shattered my hopes about good mod tools. Hopefully they can pick up the slack for other developers...

They allow more freedom in the actual game, not just in the character creation, which isnt the actual game, I rather have more freedom in the game itself and control decisions like that in the actual game, not forced in a race menu. You are surely contradicting yourself, you start totally "neutral"(not really but almost), free to do whatever you want and improve skills just the way you want(as soon as you start playing), if you'd have to choose to have some skills higher from the start you'd basically be forced to "choose" a class in a way, before you even start to play, that's not freedom, if you have another idea of this, you must mean that you just want to give your character a head start in some skills. Thats like saying "there's no freedom cause I start as level 1, they dont let me start as level 2 or 20. You want to improve skills before you even start playing.

I see your reasoning but what you suggest is less freedom, just not to you, because its what you want, just in the same way how it isnt "freedom" that they dont let you start with an assault rifle to someone who would want that. Your argument is invalid.

Not new. Every Elder Scrolls game had racial skill bonuses.

And speaking of mod ideas... perhaps something faction-related or quest-related so that you could build up your character Gothic style... hmm. I'll think about that one.

There aare two distinct case

1) the oblivion class system: it's gone hopefully and has no reason to return. It was broken and didn't favoured being what you played or even what class you are but the exact opposite: it favoured what class you are not!
2) A system where you only chose a few skills to improve: There is no point. Imagine you want to play a specific character (let's say a pure mage). The game is balanced for you to start with the difficulty level "B" (on a scale from A to Z). Why would they use a complicate system about making you spend points in a few mage skills for them to reach the difficulty level B when the rest stays to "A" when they simply can balance all the skills to the level "B" from the start and let you make the difference? From a gameplay point of view it makes no difference if you play a pure mage and it allows you to change your mind (which will generally be early in the game if you're a newb) and not starting from "A" but from "B" and thus still having a balanced character.

Many good RPG do have character creation, in which i mean choosing skills etc.

i dont get how anyone could argue against the op, its a good idea

im going to be an argonian bandit around the age of 24 or 25, he has been in jail for a few days waiting to die, he will not have straight 10s acorss the skills. he does not know how to use magic of anykind, so those are all reduced to level 1, but he can use a blade, sneak, pickpockets, picklocks, and use a bow well, why cant i take the point i droped out of magic and distribute them to the skills i have knowledge in?

a good limit could be that no skills can be leveld past 25 before actually playing.